I was invited last year to the home brewer's gathering that was informally sponsored by KY Ale. Apparently, everyone in the home brewing circles here knows the personnel at the micro breweries around here. While visiting the home brewer's festival at the KY Ale brewery, I was able to tour around the facility with my fiancee and ask a lot of questions.

The one very interesting factoid that I took from that event pertained to the KY Bourbon Barrel Ale. You guys may all know about it's story already, but I thought I'd share what I learned. BBA is KY Ale aged for about a month in used bourbon barrels. I'm assuming that the actual source of the bourbon barrels is not publicized for a reason, otherwise you would see BBA having the source written all over the labels. I was told that they are from a distillery "near Versailles". That could be Woodford Reserve or Wild Turkey, maybe even Four Roses. My guess, having tried them all and had many, many BBAs, is that it's Woodford. I asked if they were dried out or still had some in them. They said that the barrels always have some left, and that some have "quite a bit" left. He went on to say that you can even hear the bourbon sloshing around inside, more in some and less in others.

I've always known that they were strong beers, but now I can see why. Can anyone confirm which distillery it is that they buy barrels from?